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Crocodile's Immune System Kills HIV
ASEville writes "In an ongoing effort to stop the spread of HIV, scientists in Australia have discovered that crocodiles can fight off HIV and kill the virus. This is a major boon to medicine because the crocodile serum can also fight things that are penicillin resistant such as staphylococcus aureus."
Antibiotics kill living bacteria. There isn't a single antibiotic that can disable a virus (like HIV), which isn't even alive.
The scientists probably hope to use modified crocodile immunoglobulin the same way we use animal-developed immunoglobulin as a tetanus antitoxin for patients who haven't been immunized... kind of a booster shot for patients fighting an HIV infection. The problem with animal-developed antibodies is that the human body recognizes them as foreign, and soon starts to mount an immune response against them as well.
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
The human immune system is fully capable of killing HIV. However (dumbed down enough for Reuters readers) HIV infects T4 Lymphocytes, so killing the virus means killing your own immune system, and you die of obscure diseases.
The antibacterial angle sounds promising, though.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
I know the /. commentor's don't read the articles submitted all the way to the end, so here's a bit towards the end that really matters:
The hypothesis that aids is not caused by hiv has been very thoroughly disproven AFAIK. The (probable) reason one 'scientist' kept claiming that was because it made him 'famous'. Other parties that wanted to deny AIDS for political resons kept supporting this guy or held on to his theories. I can't remember his name.
As for funding: Would you give funding to 'scientists' that claimed the earth was flat or created in 7 days with no evolution? Lunatics don't get money because they are lunatics, not because their ideas need to be suppresed by gouvernment.
There are more countries in the world doing AIDS research than the US, so any errors caused by your strange funding policy would be quickly corrected in the rest of the world. The first breaktrough successes were made in Europe(france) IIRC.
As for the causes of death with AIDS: that is what you get when AIDS takes out your immune system: you die of the first petty illness that comes along.
So this 'AIDS is not caused by HIV' meme is nothing but FUD, please don't spread it any further.
This space is intentionally staring blankly at you
Schnappie, das kleine Krokodil
Amusing, even if you dont know german, more so if you do.
Brief descript for the lazy non-clicker types: German kids webpage (tv show too?) with an animated crocodile as the main character that likes to sing/dance/etc. Think of an animated version of Barney the purple dinosaur where barney is a little green croc instead.
tm
Support TBI Research: http://www.raisinhope.org
A study in 2000 proved that 3 South African prostitutes were resistant to HIV strains from the region. They also found a significant group of kenyan prostitutes with relative immunities to small doses of HIV virii. Interestingly as soon as the women started getting money from the researchers for co-operation with the studies, they lost their immunity.
Should it come as a surprise that the Human immunodeficency virus is killed by something in crocodile serum ?. There are things in the human blood stream which can kill off HIV, but most of us lack these mutated T-cells (which are killed off by the normal cells) in sufficent quantity to beat the infection completely.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
HIV is a peculiar strand of virii not taking one specific form but that of multiple forms that are ever changing..
You are correct. This retrovirus depends on an enzyme called reverse transcriptase to convert its RNA to DNA, which is then used by our cells to make more copies of the virus. Unfortunately this enzyme is not at all efficient and makes very poor copies. This means there is an extremely high mutation rate. The good side of this being HIV becomes a very slow infection and doesn't kill you in a matter of days wiping out your entire immune system. The bad side is that the mutation rate is phenomenal over time, and strains of HIV with drug resistant reverse transcriptase are becoming more and more common.
Part of the problem with the actual AIDS illness is that the patient not only has a compromised immune system due to a low CD4 T-cell count, but the little bit of immune system s/he has left is busy making thousands of useless antibodies to all the different mutated proteins the virus made over the years. It gets you both coming AND going...
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Ho, never thought I'd be the subject of a Slashdot news report.
Time to clarify things.
TFA contains a number of errors. First the statement I made about HIV is true, but as others have pointed out it does not mean we've found the cure for AIDS. It simply means that we've compared alligator serum and human serum and found the former significantly more effective at killing the HIV virus than human serum. It was intended to illustrate the overall efficacy of the crocodile / alligator immune system, that was all.
Second, these are not antibodies. Croc immune system works primarily through the innate or complement system, which does not involve antibodies. It's a simpler and more primitive immune response than the adaptive immune system that is key for mammals, but the advantage is that it's very direct and hence difficult for bacteria etc to evolve resistance to. It's "primitive" nature may be behind its effectiveness.
The main finding here is that the alligator / crocodile immune system is far more effective at killing a wider range of bacteria (gram +ve and gram -ve), viruses and fungi than our own immune system. When you've evolved over 235 million years, and your daily social behaviour involves biting limbs off other crocs, you need a good immune system! It clearly has potential medical implications down the line, but that's a long way off yet. First we have to fully understand what makes croc immunity tick. We are still trying to purify a protein which we believe is an antimicrobial peptide, but hopefully that will happen very soon after this recent work.
Eventually if anything does come of this, and we can isolate a "factor" that has human medical implications (and is safe for humans, unlike the far more effective chlorine bleach) it would indeed be synthesised. Adam Britton
This scam fed off our initial pilot study findings, back in 1998. There was worldwide media exposure at the time because of the demonstrated ability of the croc serum against antibiotic-resistant bacteria (S. aureus). They used this media coverage in a weak attempt to add credibility to their product.
Yes, we have tried suing them (mainly for defamation, because they claim we endorse this crap) but it's very difficult to sue companies that apparently don't exist.
Adam Britton
Odd phrasing aside, this research has been going on for a while. They have isolated one protein that has proven to be a very powerful antibiotic. My guess is they may have found or are trying to isolate another that functions as an anti-viral.
Oddly enough, the research started when someone decided to look into why crocodiles, who get injured all the time in fights and live in muck, never seemed to get infections from their injuries.
I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
Er, why is research only valid if it comes from an academic institution? Crocodylus Park (the name for the facility run by Wildlife Management International, of which I am an employee) is run by professional biologists who just happen to also run a tourism faclitity to get science across to the public. The fact that we're private doesn't have anything to do with the quality of our research - we still publish in peer-reviewed journals so it's open to international scrutiny like any other research.
We're also collaborating with McNeese State University in Louisiana for this project.
Adam Britton
Correct, this is what we're talking about primarily. The news article was wildly inaccurate and embarrassing to read quite frankly!
We don't talk about defensins because we're not sure yet that defensins are involved. We suspect they are, but until we purify and sequence the proteins we're looking at we can't be sure. Hopefully this is only weeks away.
Well Mr Angostura, you're as bitter as your namesake aren't you?
First of all, if it isn't clear that this news report is crammed full of factual errors, then perhaps it isn't obvious that what I said may have been completely misquoted? After all, the guy almost had me describing a new type of "crocodile antibodies"! This was "quoted" from a phone interview where I could hear the journalist typing in the background, so it's hardly a direct quote. The only part I definitely said word for word was the "gun to the head" line.
And I'm not Australian, by the way (not yet at least) so I have no idea how to operate a sheep dip.
Yes, we did discover an antimicrobial peptide (probably a defensin) several years ago. This is a continuation of that research.
Adam Britton
One final comment on this - I need to vent! Bear in mind that these news reports are *way* off the mark in their reporting. The vast majority simply copied the Reuters article and diluted the facts yet further.
It was Reuters who picked up on the HIV aspect and blew it out of proportion. It was never the goal of the study to combat HIV - it was just an interesting test. They even managed to misquote me almost completely. The main focus has been the antibacterial properties of the blood.
Also, the part about the immune system being "too powerful" is something they pulled out of their cloaca. We're quite aware, as scientists, that it's far too early to start talking about marketable antibacterial drugs. The various factors that provide crocs with their powerful immune systems may not have any safe human medical use whatsoever. The fact that they *could*, however, is obviously interesting, but too many people here are taking this dodgy news report too literally. Don't get me wrong - this is exciting stuff and it could have health benefits down the line, but I don't like seeing this work getting misrepresented like this.
There are peer-reviewed papers out there (check Merchant, principal author) and this work is being written up at the moment (check Merchant and Britton). They'll be far more informative than anything you'll read in the paper.
Incidentally, we can't submit this to Nature because back in 1998 we did a pilot study, the lid of which was blown off from an unexpected source in a fit of excitement! So it's far too late for that - croc's out of the bag, etc...
Adam Britton
I apologize if I'm being redundant, but as of the time I'm writing this, there are 442 comments when browsing at -1, so I can't guarantee that I haven't missed something.
In any event, I thought it might be helpful to post a link on PubMed to the abstract of the journal article to which the author of the Reuters article seems to be referring. At least, it's coming from the same lab and institution with which Dr. Britton (on his site) mentions having a collaboration. Any other references would be greatly appreciated.
Here's the full text for those who are interested:
Private institutions don't do research simply for "the greater good". They do it to make money. Consequently, there's a conflict of interest. For example, if a drug company has the choice of coming up with a cure for AIDS or treatment for AIDS, you can bet your ass they will treat it and not cure it because there's no money in curing anything. An academic insitution doesn't have to worry about the profits of its research (or at least we'd like to think so).
Perhaps that view is nieve but that's pretty much the way of things.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken